Shame, Depression & The Source of All Things

Hi everyone!

This is my first post here. This forum looks great. I look forward to contributing.

I stumbled across the Enneagram just recently and it has intrigued me quite a bit. I was aware of the Myers-Briggs types in which I am an INFP, but I had only vaguely heard of the Enneagram. I was told by Christian zealous parents that the Enneagram was 'New Age', whatever that means, so I avoided it. After doing the full Enneagram questionnaire I was surprised at the results. It has taken a fair bit of reading to relate the finding of being a Type 4w5 with who I am.

Something I have struggled with in my life is feeling shame and bouts of melancholy. When I saw these are common for Type 4 I was surprised at the accuracy. What I couldn't work out (and what I've wondered for ages) is what are the triggers that make me feel shame and depression. I came to this resolution today. Please, tell me what your thoughts are:

Anger turned inward is depression; it is the manifestation of self-rejection. Depression results from not being the person I wish to be. I have lost hope and donít believe I can obtain the qualities in others that I dream to be. This is envy! I wish I could have what others have. In imagining a self in the future I become anxious as I try desperately to define who I am, and who I am not by comparing with the features of others. I feel ashamed for not meeting my own high standards as set by the ideal version of myself that I envisage. The more I contemplate about my alleged deficiencies, the more I feel shame and depression.

Escape from this prison is possible, but first I must transform the way that I perceive myself. I must remember who I really am. I must remember that I come from the Source of all creation. I am not unique or different in any bad or good way. I am made of the same stuff everyone else is made of. We share the same world, same reality, same human body, same everything. It is the illusion that we are different that keeps me bound in isolation. In knowing my essence I reunite with everyone and everything.

We do share a lot with the humanity and yet there is a lot that is quite unique to every one of us. I admire your determination to change things in life and work towards a brighter life. If you allow me to heed to you a few warnings, I will say that the road ahead is challenging. I understand your elation at having figured out your enneagram type and getting to know patterns about yourself that you were earlier only faintly aware of. But there is a risk of getting drowned in the enneagram. Please do not let that happen. It is only a tool to get rid of wasteful thought and behavioural patterns. What you are, who you are is going to be very much your own making. The enneagram can only facilitate that.

To your display image, I'd like to say - You are the flower, you are the miracle, You are life. The need is not to change yourself. The need is to accept yourself. You are beautiful, contrary to the excruciating ways you judge yourself. I'd quote Kahlil gibran to end my post -

beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.But you are life and you are the veil.Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

The way I see it we don't all share the same body, our bodies belong to us and us alone, but that doesn't mean we should be allowed to use it however we want or do whatever we want to it without any restraint.

The way I see it we don't all share the same body, our bodies belong to us and us alone, but that doesn't mean we should be allowed to use it however we want or do whatever we want to it without any restraint.

What I meant to say is that we are all share a common experience of the human body having all come from the same Source. I believe the violence around the world is because we forget this simple truth.

We do share a lot with the humanity and yet there is a lot that is quite unique to every one of us. I admire your determination to change things in life and work towards a brighter life. If you allow me to heed to you a few warnings, I will say that the road ahead is challenging. I understand your elation at having figured out your enneagram type and getting to know patterns about yourself that you were earlier only faintly aware of. But there is a risk of getting drowned in the enneagram. Please do not let that happen. It is only a tool to get rid of wasteful thought and behavioural patterns. What you are, who you are is going to be very much your own making. The enneagram can only facilitate that.

To your display image, I'd like to say - You are the flower, you are the miracle, You are life. The need is not to change yourself. The need is to accept yourself. You are beautiful, contrary to the excruciating ways you judge yourself.

Thank you for your words of wisdom. What has been your experience with the Enneagram? Have you changed and grown?

Oh it has been a long road. Thank you for the question. I always like it when someone asks me to share my reflections on my own life. What I fear is becoming preachy. I don't like that. I don't like that someone preaches me, I don't like anyone preaching anyone and above all I don't like myself when I end up preaching something. The thing is, the journey has been tough for me and there is inherent value in that experience. And likewise all journeys are inherently valuable. I understood that my existence lies as a resonance between my brighter and darker moods. Without either of them I will cease to exist. At times I have glorified one over the other and at other times I have glorified the first one at the expense of the second. But there can be no electricity without having the two poles. There is no point in judging oneself. Judgment is like making an observation concrete. Observation is an inherent quality of the mind. When we lose faith in ourselves we try to stick to judgments. And like this on and on I have made many observations about myself, life, the world. Overall I feel closer to the world and at the same time more detached. When I pay attention, I am available to the issue at hand and I channelize my emotions in such a way that I get to express myself while keeping things within context.

The darker areas are self-doubt, anger, inability to relax, pushing myself too much and then feeling like I deserve self-indulgence. But as I said I do not condemn myself for these things. In time they will grow into what they are supposed to grow into. The superego that "I am good if I stay true to myself" is NOT entirely a healthy thing. In fact it becomes one of the last things to let go. "Staying true to oneself" is a fallacy that bifurcates the Four into "me" and "not me" emotions. Integration for me is acceptance that I am foolish and I am allowed to be the way I want. If I say something relevant to what people want to hear, it's fine. If I say things that people are not able to relate to, then it is fine too. If I achieve my potential, it's fine. If I don't achieve my potential it is fine too. As Bazz Luhrmann says in the song Sunscreen

"Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much and don't berate yourself either. Your choices are half chances and so are everybody else's."

Probably I have been too hard on myself, so as to survive and now I am learning how to be gentle to myself. It is my own path and I have to rise to genuine love for myself. Not pride, not achievements but simple love for who I am - the flawed fool with some wit. I think Shakespeare was a Four too. He said - Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

This is my first post here. This forum looks great. I look forward to contributing.

I stumbled across the Enneagram just recently and it has intrigued me quite a bit. I was aware of the Myers-Briggs types in which I am an INFP, but I had only vaguely heard of the Enneagram. I was told by Christian zealous parents that the Enneagram was 'New Age', whatever that means, so I avoided it. After doing the full Enneagram questionnaire I was surprised at the results. It has taken a fair bit of reading to relate the finding of being a Type 4w5 with who I am.

Something I have struggled with in my life is feeling shame and bouts of melancholy. When I saw these are common for Type 4 I was surprised at the accuracy. What I couldn't work out (and what I've wondered for ages) is what are the triggers that make me feel shame and depression. I came to this resolution today. Please, tell me what your thoughts are:

Anger turned inward is depression; it is the manifestation of self-rejection. Depression results from not being the person I wish to be. I have lost hope and don’t believe I can obtain the qualities in others that I dream to be. This is envy! I wish I could have what others have. In imagining a self in the future I become anxious as I try desperately to define who I am, and who I am not by comparing with the features of others. I feel ashamed for not meeting my own high standards as set by the ideal version of myself that I envisage. The more I contemplate about my alleged deficiencies, the more I feel shame and depression.

Escape from this prison is possible, but first I must transform the way that I perceive myself. I must remember who I really am. I must remember that I come from the Source of all creation. I am not unique or different in any bad or good way. I am made of the same stuff everyone else is made of. We share the same world, same reality, same human body, same everything. It is the illusion that we are different that keeps me bound in isolation. In knowing my essence I reunite with everyone and everything.

Welcome! Thank you for this lovely post. I think your grade of depression is a lot like mine and is probably very closely related to the ways enneagram 4s think and what motivates us. Envy is something I'm just recently coming to realize in myself. It is weird because I've always been the first one to be happy for another and to not feel threatened by their joys or successes. Yet somehow, stubbornly feeling that I'm just different and that I won't be like them can create more depression when I'm already feeling down. I don't think envy brings me down first - I think it just keeps me down when I'm in the wrong mindset. As far as what gets me down first - it is experiencing what I perceive to be rejection. The silly part is that just one person's rejection triggers the shame and then I am in that self-rejecting and shamed place mentally so then I start fearing rejection from those I was formerly comfortable with. This usually creates more risk of rejection or opportunity to compare and then envy. Lovely cycle no? Ha!

I agree that remembering the wonder and beauty that is the creation of each life is an important beginning to shifting out of this distorted, anger turned inward frame of mind. I could do better at delving deeper in that direction than what I usually do - try to tangle out what is neurotransmitters, what is childhood issues, what is enneagram, what is mbti, what is just me, what is them, and on and on at ad nauseam!

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